Amazon patents dualume tablet
Backlit devices are good at animation.
Reflective devices are good at battery life.
Back on December 11 of 2009 (coming up on three years ago), I coined the term ”dualume” in this blog to designate a device that used both methods of displaying text and images.
A patent from Amazon
dated August 30, 2012, is getting some attention. A tweet from Joe Wikert about a Mashable article showed up in my Flipboard morning read (although I’d seen something about it yesterday).
The device would have two screens, front and back. You’d be able to “push” an image from one side to the other…swapping between a reflective screen and backlit screen.
I know some people think I’m just an Amazon fan, but that sounds like it would not be a popular thing to me.
Entourage tried a two-screen device like that, although the screen were side-by side like two pages of a paperbook, not front and back. It was relatively expensive and heavy, and eventually failed in the market…it wound up being cleared out for $80 on http://www.woot.com/, which is owned by Amazon.
Let’s say Amazon solves those problems, and the device is reasonably priced and not excessively heavy.
I’m having a tough time imagining how I would hold that device. When I hold my Kindle Fire, three or four fingers are usually contacting the cover which at that point is covering the back of the device.
I don’t like to put my fingers on the screen, even though I have to do that to interact with it. I use a stylus sometimes, and I do think we’ll see a gestural interface for tablets where we don’t have to touch them, but just wave our fingers over them, Minority Report style.
I don’t want to have to hold my device by the screen.
Also, how do you put it down? I wouldn’t put my Fire face down on a restaurant table. What happens when both sides are face?
It reminds me of something which I think originally appeared in Omni Magazine. The idea was that, since toast always lands buttered side down, and a cat always lands on its feet, you could strap a piece of toast buttered side up on a cat’s back, drop it, and it would hover in mid-air. 
If the screen is on both sides, how do you cover it? I can see some sort of retracting cover that you slide aside, but it seems like a lot of work.
I can picture a commercial, licensed by Amazon from Devo:
“When you want to read a book…you must flip it!
When you want to watch a show…you must flip it!”
When I wrote about Apple’s filing, more than a year ago, for a screen that could switch in situ between the two lighting methods, that made a lot more sense to me.
The Amazon patent is two things stuck together. The Apple patent transforms from one thing to another.
Centaur…or werewolf? I think, in this case, I’m going with the werewolf.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
September 1, 2012 at 6:05 am |
Double-sided? Wow. At least they’re thinking different. But, as you say, one can see the downside.
What’s the upside? For users, redundancy as a fall-back–if one side goes bad, the other side can still be used.
For Amazon, upsides might be:
1. Fewer SKUs for Amazon to cope with. The separate RSK and Tablet lines would be gone–buyers would get both.
2. Reduced costs from having only one battery, charger, casing, and even processor and memory bank (?) per pair, instead of two. So buyers could be tempted by getting both at only a 50% cost increase, not a 100% increase. A lot of people want both devices—maybe 50% of current RSKs would like and/or would benefit from a tablet, and 50% of tablet owners would like / benefit from an RSK (?).
3. An opportunity to make money on sales of an essential accessory sleeve / kickstand / holder combo (?). (Here’s a neologism: nec-sessory: a necessary accessory.)
This “combo” topic is one where sufficient ingenuity hasn’t been employed to date, in order to mitigate the downsides you mentioned. I have a few innovative ideas on the topic. But they’re secret. I’ll see if Amazon has employed them in its accessory. I’ll be impressed if they have—then the company will have a clear winner.
September 1, 2012 at 6:17 am |
PS: Maybe Amazon is thinking of pairing this gadget with a smartphone that uses the tablet’s electronics and screen to replace most of its own, cutting its costs drastically.
If this is what it’s done, it’s done an amazing job of keeping things secret. Because this would be a Big Deal–something worth shouting about. Bezos is sure behaving as though he’s got Big News–and the stock price seems to sense (or know) that too.
September 1, 2012 at 6:49 am |
PPS. Maybe one screen of the gadget would be covered by a thin, snap-off, touch-sensitive keyboard, similar to that of MS’s Surface. It would be a virtual nec-sessory. And maybe the other screen would be covered by a thin, snap-off, touch-sensitive “handset,” for making phone calls. (Pop-up/push-down finger loops in the back or side might help users handle it.) These covers could also function as kickstands.
It could be sold as the “Kindle Four” (!).
If Amazon does this, everyone will say, after a month, “It Was Inevitable.” (Not without Bezos, it wasn’t!!)
September 1, 2012 at 7:01 am |
PPPS: One last (?) thought. Maybe the “Four” will include all the software enhancements that should have been made to the Kindle long ago. I.e., maybe the company held them back in order to give current owners a reason to upgrade now. I like that thought, because it’s so much less distressing than the alternative: that the company was too dense or crass to appreciate and see the need for “quality.”